Thursday News and Open Thread

The New York Times has released an extensive report with sexual harassment allegations against media honcho Harvey Weinstein. He has taken a temporary leave.

The New Yorker reports that Donald Jr. and Ivanka were facing a possible Indictment in New York.

ISIS is still claiming responsibility for Las Vegas. No one is listening to them.

I've been reading everything on the Las Vegas shooter, his girlfriend and her family here, in Australia and in the Philippines, ISIS claims about it, and even the Manila casino massacre in June, one of ISIS' few false claims.

There's obviously something missing, nothing adds up, and once I have a theory that makes sense, I'll write about it. One interview I don't see mentioned much is this one in the Guardian by the former partner of Marilou's sister, who spent time in Nevada with the couple. He describes Paddock's views on guns and his algorithms for gambling.

agree, absolutely nothing about this adds up. At face value this was an act of a psychopath (to my understanding at least) but it's impossible to believe that someone that sick would be able to hide it for so long and right up to the last minute.

The money thing is also hazy, apparently living a high roller life style with no apparent source of income other than

to the beginning of his firearm stockpiling. Did he tell anyone about it? What did he say about it? Had to believe no one else in his life knew about it. I'm not blaming them, just saying they might be able to shed some light on motive.

Trump, the famous nickname maker (e.g. Little Marco,Lyn'n Ted, Low-energy Jeb, Little Rocket Man), is likely to have "moron" attached to him. This pejorative and disrespectful reference will not attach to the person repeating the name in the way that the Secretary of State has used the name that he has not denied. Rex Tillerson has given license.

And, of course, Trump knows this all too well. At this point he has vented by trash tweeting NBC. Trump can't keep Tillerson and Tillerson can't stay. The timing is not good for Trump to unload Rex...such causing even more political damage. But, we can be sure there will soon be a Friday night news dump in our future.

As for Tillerson, his departure would not create any loss for the country. He has demonstrated the hallmark of the bulk of Trump's cabinet..incompetence. And, in short order, has made the state department a shell of itself. Even the conservative foreign affairs author, Max Boot, has called Tillerson the worst Secretary of State in 100 years

The only real downside of a Tillerson departure is his replacement, should Trump actually get around to nominating a successor. We know that with Trump, things are never so bad that they can't get worse.

Previous floaters were John Bolton (saved by Trump's reported dislike of his white mustachio) and Mitt Romney (although, Mitt may not care to, once again, have an interview dinner with him). Nikki Haley is a possibility and surely she is willing--a major factor these days. It is being reported that Trump offered his first wife, Ivana, the Ambassadorship to the Czech Republic; she turned him down, but maybe he could try again..she might be open to it.

In any event, time is really of the essence for Trump so as to work against his Rexian nickname from sticking. Trump would still need to contend with the nickname given to him by Senator Corker, "chaos". As Corker stated: "Sec. Tillerson, Sec. Mattis, and Chief of Staff Kelly are those people that help separate the country from chaos."

from the continuous loop of reporters asking about Trump being called a moron, with their infinite ways of phrasing the question, or stating the speculation. A favorite - 'The former CEO of Exxon Mobil thought he was a moron".

This is probably not the end of the Trump presidency, but when it does end, it will look a lot like this.

Peter:"Naturalized citizens are not second-class citizens, and cannot be treated differently from other citizens."

Especially if they're persons of color. Even being born in Indiana didn't protect U.S. Judge Gonzalo Curiel from being identified and disparaged as a "Mexican" by the Bubble-Headed Bleach Blond.

"I don't blame myself. You see, Mr. Gittes, most people never have to face the fact that at the right time and the right place, they're capable of ANYTHING."
- Noah Cross (John Huston), "Chinatown" (1974)

reasonably clear that by "cannot" I meant "cannot lawfully." Of course any legal right might in fact be violated on any given occasion by any given despot. No one is denying that fact by asserting that the government "can't" pass or enforce a certain sort of law.

Well, I knew what you meant, at any rate, Peter.
And legal, Constitutional rights have been violated many times. By local and state governments, not just the federal government.
This is why I have been a 35+ year member of the ACLU, because they fight for our rights.

... for many years, the law is only as good as one's ability to actually enforce it. And right now, you've got people in power who don't give a rat's a$$ about immigrants' rights. A federal judge in Arizona tried to assert those rights by bringing an action against Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and what happened? Trump pardoned Arpaio.

Acadmically, legally and morally, Peter, you're absolutely correct. I'm not contesting that. But we just had a Dreamer in Kona who first came here 28 years ago when he was 13, and was arrested by ICE and deported to Mexico anyway on an administrative technicality over the expressed moral objections of the federal judge overseeing his case in Honolulu. He even admonished them from the bench, and they just shrugged their shoulders and smiled.

We're in uncharted territory. These. People. Don't. Care. Because they clearly don't respect the nominal rule of law, the old rules may not necessarily apply. So, my question for you here is this: What are you prepared to do about it, when those in power thumb their noses at you and give you a raspberry? When normal legal protocols and boundaries are disrespected, ignored and violated, are you willing and able to elevate your own game accordingly?

called "Lives of the Hypocrites." (So-called "family values," self-proclaimed "pro-life" Republican congressman resigns, after disclosure that he encouraged his mistress to have an abortion. Story published on the same day he voted to impose an unconstitutional blanket 20-week abortion ban on women whose circumstances he didn't know or care about.

The lack of anything resembling a motive is hard for anyone to wrap their heads around. Then the fact that it's a 64 year old - not exactly your typical mass shooter demo - just makes it all the more mind-numbing. How do you go through your whole life as a relatively peaceful person only to snap at 64?

It's hard to tell whether the sense that "there must be something else" is because there must be, or because we're all afraid of what it means if there's nothing else.

far the money trail is strangely hazy. Mosy articles are like this one vague references to a fortune made in real estate.

He had steady jobs and later made his fortune in real estate--he was a multimillionaire, one of his brothers said--which afforded him a comfortable retirement as a high-stakes gambler.

After a series of apparently mid-level government and corporate jobs

He worked at the U.S. Postal Service, and in the 1980s, he worked as an agent for the Internal Revenue Service. He later audited defense contracts for Lockheed Corp., which became Lockheed Martin Corp.

He apparently made his fortune in real estate

In the early 1990s, Paddock began investing in California real estate, according to property records and his brothers. Paddock purchased rental properties and arranged some purchases through a trust set up in his mother's name, including a Temecula, Calif., ranch house where she lived from the early `90s to mid-2000s.

However the paper trail here remains unclear

It wasn't clear how much money Paddock netted from real estate, or how much accrued to his partners, which included his youngest brother. Eric Paddock said his brother moved their mother into a comfortable Florida home.

even his biggest deals

In 2014, Paddock and his partners sold a Dallas apartment complex for more than $8 million, according to the buyer, in what appeared his largest real-estate deal.

that Paddock was a shadowy "crisis actor"; a puppet in the hands of George Soros, the Illuminati, and the New World Order gun-grabbers -- which is what tens-of-thousands of our hillbilly heroin-addled, Trump-humping fellow Americans now seem to think.

I see that even someone as superficially respectable as Roger Stone is on friendly terms with one of the leaders of the unspeakably loathsome Sandy Hook Truther movement. A movement btw, very well represented, come to find out, in the 'respectable' Washington Times comment section..

This country has been teetering on the edge for a long time, and now it has officially gone off the deep end.

There does seem to be a lot of cognitive dissonance going on right now in response to an entrepreneurial rich white American with a lot of guns (the ultimate ideal of probably half the country) turning out to be a murderous psychopath. How could this possibly be? Say it ain't so, Joe!

to the Guardian article that Jeralyn linked to he was a conservative who was apparently pretty obsessed with the 2nd amendment. But like Joe says nobody really seems to know where he got his money from.

Paddock was forthcoming in "great detail" on matters from his "float", or cash gambling base, to his annual income, which was "very much well over a senior executive's wage in the US".

"And how he obtained that: the algorithms behind his methodology of gambling - only on machines, not on tables," he said.

People beating machines with "algorithms" (not by counting cards!) happens only in TV and movie shows. I guess the authorities in America have contacted him to find out what he remembers from Paddock's description of the algorithms. Link

Paddock favored the high-dollar variety version of the game, whose machines are separate from the main video poker and slot areas. Players like Paddock use strategies that can minimize the house winnings and in some cases gain a minuscule mathematical advantage.

Michael Shackleford, who runs a gambling strategy website called The Wizard of Odds, said based on what is known of Paddock's life, the gunman seems to have been what the casinos refer to as a "premium mass" player -- one who bets in higher amounts, with a better understanding of the game than the typical player.

Premium mass players pay close attention to the odds in the game they're playing and the payout, and they typically need access to a lot of money because they may have long dry spells where they lose exorbitant amounts.

Eventually, Shackleford said, if players stay true to a perfect strategy -- one designed to maximize their performance over the long haul, such as by getting rid of potentially decent cards like low pairs to increase chances of a big-payout royal flush -- their luck will turn, based on statistics, and they'll break even or come close to it. When you add in the freebies from the casino, the player can come out ahead.

"Vegas is full of people that are basically just gambling for free," Shackleford said. "I think the shooter was one of these people who was basically milking the system, getting free

has an article up about Paddock basically saying that he didn't make his money off of gambling and that he made it off of real estate and was basically a high roller in the gambling world because he had money.

And yes, the whole "algorithm" thing never made sense because someone who is beating the casinos like that is going to be banned from the casino.

if i was her, i would have gone to australia and gotten a lawyer and then had an FBI agent from the branch office interview me in australia. it risky to talk to federal agents when any inadvertent misstatement may get one charged with false statements.

The mistress was not accusing Cong. Murphy of committing a crime. She complained to him about his political hypocrisy, and somehow that message from her to him became public, leading to his political downfall.

Thanks. And especially considering the prosecution now underway of the Orlando shooter's mentally limited and seemingly coerced wife for some sort of aiding and abetting or some such, the risk to Paddock's girlfriend is very real. Sorry, Linea, that I was unable to discern what "girlfriend" you were talking about, as two "girlfriends" were under discussion in the same thread.

i should have been more detailed. also, i don't believe she has any reason to not cooperate with the investigation. i don't believe she has done anything wrong and i feel sorry for her with all the attention she is getting. it doesn't seem anybody had any awareness that something was amiss.

Exception for Criminal Statutes: There is no presumption against extraterritoriality when dealing with statutes prohibiting crimes against the U.S. government. U.S. v. Bowman, 260 U.S. 94 (1922); but see Kollias v. D & G Marine Maintenance, 29 F.3d 67, 71 (2d Cir. 1994), cert. denied, 513 U.S. 1146 (1995) (holding that Bowman should be read narrowly, such that "only criminal statutes, and perhaps only those relating to the government's power to prosecute wrongs committed against it, are exempt from the presumption [against extraterritoriality]"). Criminal statutes are deemed not to be dependent upon the locality of their government's jurisdiction, but on the right of the government to defend itself against obstruction and fraud committed by its own "citizens, officers or agents." Bowman, 260 U.S. at 98.

Not clear if the Bowman exception to the presumption applies to non-citizen residents of the U.S., when acting abroad.

She was not interviewed right after her return, but the next morning after she had a night's rest and and met with her attorney. Her lawyer said he was hired by her family. Her daughter, who is an artist and was formerly a successful entrepreneur, and who lives in Venice Beach CA with her husband and their daughter, likely retained him since he practices in Santa Monica. He negotiated the conditions of her interview prior to her return from the Philippines. She may have immunity for all we know (which would not apply to false statements, of course.)

She wanted to clear her name. She also wanted to return to the U.S. because her daughter and granddaughter are here.

Will that turn out to be a mistake? Perhaps, it certainly was for the Zazi family. Did she tell her lawyer the truth? Who knows.

If she was interviewed in Australia and lied about her knowledge, and had any advance knowledge, or participation, they wouldn't need a false statement charge; She'd be flown here to face a terrorism support or other such charge.

If you don't think Australians can be charged in the U.S. or extradited, ask Kim DotCom. As he says, "I never lived there I never traveled there I had no company there." But the U.S. is prosecuting him for copyright infringement.

South Americans are extradited here all the time regardless of whether they knew the drugs were intended for the U.S.

By flying to the U.S. and cooperating with the FBI, she got some kind of benefit she wouldn't have gotten had she not come here voluntarily. We just don't know exactly what it was. Thus, to say she made a mistake is just unsupported speculation .Please take that stuff elsewhere.

Trump so said in a cryptic utterance while posing with a group of military leaders and their spouses after a dinner in the WH State Dining Room. When asked what "storm", or what "calm", Trump only said "You'll find out."

What in the world? Just what Americans need: to be frightened into staying under their bed. Is it a nuclear attack on North Korea, ISIS, decertifying Iran, no birth control pills for you, giving Rex the boot, a trash tweet about Hillary's emails, a surge in Trump Organization profits, or the after effects of the cabbage dish served?

Axios reporter Jonathan Swan got a response from an unnamed WH staff member: Trump is just trolling you all. Great. a troll in the White House. It is clear Rex has correctly sized Trump up.

the secret of the "Calm before the storm." It is Trump's War on Comedy. Trump has attacked the late night comics for satirizing him...not funny, he says and needs to stop, and he needs equal time comics.

It will be a challenge, since Trump and his supporters have such a circumscribed arena of humor...mocking the pronunciation of Puerto Rico, shooting paper towels at hurricane victims, cutting off CHIP, taking away health care for millions, making it harder and more expensive to obtain conception control medications and making it easier to fire gays because religion, and the real knee slapper, making fun of reporters with disabilities. All part of morongate.

Department of Health and Human Services issued two rules rolling back a federal requirement that employers must include birth control coverage in their health insurance plans. The rules offer an exemption to any employer that objects to covering contraception services on the basis of sincerely held religious beliefs or moral convictions.

why only birthcontrol? what about a corporation's moral conviction against vacinations, psychiatric medication, blood transfusions, and end of life issues? i thought there was already a legal case that ruled against these sorts of limited exemptions.

where do i look up a company's corporate religion before applying for a position? here is the Hobby Lobby job posting for Linux System Administrator and there is no mention that this is a `corporate christian' entity that descriminates against women in their healthcare package.

on the 5 million. He might have gambled 5 million but made 5 million at the video poker table? No way. There's no way the casinos would not have banned him if he was pulling that kind of money out of their casinos.

WaPo had a story stating that he apparently made all his money through real estate and was a big time gambler which makes sense. I'm sure the FBI has a copy of his bank statements and his tax return by now.

The sad thing is we may never know why he did what he did. The Guardian said he was a conservative and a 2nd amendment person. How he thought killing 59 people was going to further the 2nd amendment I have no idea.

"Disclosure to contractors and other agentsNotwithstanding any other provision of this section, no return or return information shall be disclosed to any contractor or other agent of a governmental entity referred to in subparagraph (A)(iii) unless such entity, to the satisfaction of the Secretary--"

Seems like in this case disclosure of Paddock's returns could be justified.

But my first post also raises another question. What is the over/under that anyone will be charged for releasing the 2015 return to NBC?

I don't pretend to be a an expert on gaming in Las Vegas but a $US5,000,000 winning total seems like something that would raise eyebrows not just in the casinos but with tax authorities as well.

UK are reporting some new "facts" about Paddock. Seems like his girl friend was not his only girl friend. At least one lady of the night is talking out of school about his likes. The paper also claims LEOs are looking for other fallen ladies who were hired, or supplied by casinos. Another new claim is there was a "note" found with numbers on it. But the numbers were not calculations for hitting vics; rather they were phone numbers. Which raises the question was this a second note? I am still interested in more details about just how much coin of the realm Paddock had. No doubt he had real estate and seemed to be generous with his friends and family. Some speculate that he also made a significant amount from gaming; but it is not clear how much.

In any case Paddock does seem to have enough cash on hand to pay for his shooting spree. I have not seen the details but a low end long gun of the type he used probably runs around ~$US750 and with bump stocks lets round up to $US50,000 for his weapons and ammo.

If Paddock really knew as much about small arms/2A stuff as some are claiming I have to wonder why he made the choices he did. Most of us have seen the second Terminator movie where Arnold uses a mini gun from an elevated position and helps his homies escape from the LEOs. With all the international travel Paddock did even if he only saw the Terminator he should have known a mini gun would be far more effective than a rather random collection of civilian rated small arms with a not that reliable add on to increase the rate of fire at the expense of accuracy. Even something like a few full auto Kalashnikovs would be a better, cheaper, and more reliable choice than what he used; not to mention more deadly.

I am convinced there is a lot more to this story than what is known so far. But I have to say there is so much that does not make sense; and to make matters worse the pressers so far have seemed to leave the impression someone is trying to hide something.

Part of that was his background with defense contractors. It was mentioned that he worked at the famous Skunk Works.

I noticed this because I also worked at Skunk Works.

After it was no longer Skunk Works. Disney got the building and totally refitted it for the making of DINOSAUR. I worked there for about five years. It was a very nice workplace being all completely remade for the purpose. But one funny thing was there was no reception, radio, tv, phone. So we all got cable in our cubes. For five years I had a tv in my cube. Always on. Just like home.

When we moved in we started a petition to get a sign for the building featuring Flower. The skunk from Bambie.

Dude you watch too much Hollywood. You can't just walk into the gun store and buy full auto AK's. much less mini guns. The shooter needed neither efficiency or accuracy considering the circumstances so I don't understand your argument.

LEOs claimed the "note" in the room contained numbers related to accurate shooting. Wonder why someone would go to the trouble of calculating bullet trajectories if they were not concerned about accuracy.

if he only saw the Terminator he should have known a mini gun would be far more effective

i googled. from my research, it is not realistic that he could have acquired one of the estimated eleven civilian-owned miniguns (seems they can't realistically be fired terminator-style either). and the extreme dificulty in acquiring true "full auto Kalashnikovs" is the reason he used bump-stocks.

p.s. not pretending to be a firearms expert. this is information from my research.

Fact of the matter is "full auto Kalashnikovs" are one of the more common military weapons around. The USSR and several other countries turned them out en mass and sent them to "rebels" all over the world. In many areas outside the US they are priced around $US250. Paddock traveled to several countries in Asia and the Middle East where he could have purchased them.

No question a full automatic AK is far more reliable and accurate than any semi auto with a bump stock. Something easy to verify because the LEOs said they found at least two of Paddock's weapons jammed.

But you seemed to have missed my point that Paddock did not seem to be constrained by money when selecting his small arms. In addition he seems to have been buying his small arms for quite some time. A mini gun would probably cost something like half a mill in some place like boarder regions of the Middle East. Given the time and money he could/did invest in his evil acts it is easy to say he could have easily upgraded the fire power he used.

I have to point out one of the biggest objections lots of 2A advocates have about some liberals trying to write gun laws is the ignorance about guns many of those liberals have.

Classic example is the hue and cry about bump stocks. My impression when using one is it was a toy. It was not all that easy to maintain any reasonable rate of fire and accuracy was terrible. Not to mention the same thing can be accomplished by hooking your finger in the belt loop on your pants and using a shoe string, probably with better accuracy.

All of which makes me wonder why the LEOs made something of the numbers on the note found in Paddock's room being about accurate shooting when he was using a bump stock which would make any attempt to be accurate a joke.

Bottom line is to anyone with even a basic knowledge of fire arms it looks like Paddock wasted a lot of time and money that could have been better spent.

A mini gun would probably cost something like half a mill in some place like boarder regions of the Middle East. Given the time and money he could/did invest in his evil acts it is easy to say he could have easily upgraded the fire power he used.

i don't want to come across as strident but it just isn't realistic that a retired accountant could broker a deal with afghan terrorists, have shipping documents fabricated, and bribe enough foreign officials to successfully have a minigun and ammo recovered from a shot-down u.s. helicopter shipped to the united states. one does not need to be an expert on military weapons or an expert on the shipping of illegal cargo to realize how farfetched and implausible your scenario is. sorry.

I think the idea that he would go overseas to obtain automatic weapons is preposterous. Precisely for the shipping difficulties. Him attempting to bring weapons into the US would have brought him unwanted attention.

you even know how ridiculous you sound, this "toy" you deride helped cause mass carnage with legally and easily obtained ordinance, why would he take the chance of marginally increasing his fire power with much more difficult to and possibly illegal weapons.

Sure he could have done better with fully automatic weapons and miniguns, or a 50 caliber MG, or an Apache attack helicopter or a MOAB..... That is not the point.

You want to judge this as some kind of bizarre judgement on the poor ROI he got on his investment "he wasted a lot of time and money", pretty sick if you ask me.

...is to spray inaccurate fire at a high cyclic rate. Because the motion of the weapon obliterates accuracy, it seems that the only purpose for such a device is to "hose down" a crowd with the equivalent of automatic weapons fire.

Shooter Paddock was actually "living the dream" of practically every one of the tens of thousands of bump stock owners, by being one of the very few to use it for the purpose it was designed for.

"The most vanilla profile one could possibly imagine. A modest gambler at least by our standards, you know, nothing serious, paid promptly, never owed any money anywhere in Las Vegas. He didn't fit the profile of a problem or compulsive gambler.

What was -- if there was anything interesting that we discovered in the years of service and we have butlers and waiters and masseuses and the people in the beauty shop that know this woman and this man completely. They talk about normal mundane things. But if there's anything interesting that stood out over the six years, nobody that's ever worked here have ever seen the gentleman or the lady take a drink of wine, beer or alcohol of any kind.

Now, a lot of people don't drink. But considering their frequency of all the restaurants, and their behavior as normal tourist taking advantage of everything that's available in our resort, they never ever imbibed in any liquor. Their behavior was conservative, private, understated in every way. You never ever would stop a man like this coming in, you know, in the building."

My first thought was the boyfriend of Paddock's girlfriend's sister said Paddock did enjoy wine. And second gambling debts don't seem to be a factor. Last there seems to be confusion about the definition of conservative. Not sure Wynn used the word in the political sense of conservative, rather in the more general behavior sense.